Colin Trevorrow Teases ‘Jurassic World 2’ and the New Trilogy of ‘Jurassic Park’ Movies

Every single human being with access to a movie theater saw Jurassic World this summer, making it the highest grossing film of all time not directed by James Cameron (aka, the third highest grossing film of all time). Jurassic World 2 was inevitable. But how about a trilogy? Because director Colin Trevorrow says that he always had a three-movie arc in mind. Now, $1.6 billion later, he’s able to start talking about it like a real thing that will actually happen and not some crazy plan.

Trevorrow was a guest on an episode of Jurassic Cast, a podcast about, well, you know, and he got surprisingly chatty about the upcoming sequels. He even made it clear that the next entry in the franchise won’t be called Jurassic World 2, but calling it that for the moment is just much easier than calling it something else. Our money is still on Jurassic War.

Anyway, Trevorrow says that Jurassic World 2 and its next sequel will be all about exploring concepts that were only hinted at in the first Jurassic Park. This most recent movie was about packaging and merchandising extinct animals, so sequels will have to be about what happens when they break from that mold and have to coexist with humanity:

We looked at it as a trilogy from the very beginning. We designed the whole thing that way. And, honestly, the whole trilogy is articulated in Jurassic Park. Jurassic World is all based on Ian Malcom’s quote: ‘you stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you knew what you had, you’d packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox and now you want to sell it.’ That, to me, is Jurassic World. That’s why I had all the product placement, that’s what it was. So with Jurassic World 2 it’s: “dinosaurs and man separated by 65 million years of evolution have been thrown back into the mix together – how can we know what to expect?’. That’s not the exact quote, but you get the idea.

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And that’s why its exciting the movie did well. I had a beginning, a middle and an end and it was designed this way. So now we get to play that out.

Trevorrow also promised that the sequel will fully break the franchise mold – there won’t be anyone running from dinosaurs on a tropical island. He also confirmed that Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard’s characters will return, but says that their experiences in the first movie will leave them changed:

We made [Jurassic World] with the fans very much in mind. And I’m not going to forget that, but we’ve seen a lot of ‘dinosaurs chasing people around on an island’ movies. And I think you guys and the general audience are going to be down to explore where else we can go. Owen is going to be in it, Claire is in it and neither are going to be in the same place we left them in the first movie. And even though Claire is the one who evolves the most over the trilogy, it’s her story that mirrors this changing world. Owen has shit to deal with. They’ve both opened Pandora’s Box in Jurassic World and both of them are responsible for different elements of it. And I think the way these characters are connected to these circumstances of what’s happening, it’s different than previous films. It’s not ‘let’s manufacture a way to get them somewhere’, they’re embedded into it now in a way that us storytellers are able to keep them involved without it feeling contrived.

Of course, Trevorrow’s involvement in any future movies will be a little more limited. He’s already signed on to direct Star Wars: Episode 9, so he’s going to be just a little busy for the next few years. However, he’ll remain onboard Jurassic World 2 as a writer and producer, so he’ll surely get some say on who gets hired to see his trilogy through to completion. So yeah, everything’s coming up Trevorrow.

Jurassic World 2 (or whatever it ends up being called) is already set for a June 22, 2018 release date.